Weather, By The Book

POP ALERT

You are watching the news, and the weatherman is talking about an inversion.

You should:

A: Put a peach basket over the petunias.

B: Shop locally.

C: Call before you dig.

D: Avoid strenuous exercise and drink plenty of beer no matter what the forecast is.

Or, turn to page 162 of ``The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weather,'' now arriving in bookstores.

Here you will find an unsmart-alecky definition of an inversion -- those nasty things that magnify air pollution -- by Dr. Mel Goldstein, an icon of Connecticut weather forecasting.

In 358 pages, Goldstein has written what appears to be everything one needs to know about the weather. ``Everything, absolutely everything,'' he insists. Even El Viejo, the little-known and well-behaved cousin of El Nino and La Nina, it occurs when ocean currents in the Pacific are normal -- is described.

This is the book to have when the weather gets wild. When is a ``severe thunderstorm watch'' issued? When thunderstorms are expected to deliver winds of at least 58 mph and 3/4-inch-diameter hail. If that storm is then spotted on radar -- or actually seen -- the watch becomes a ``warning.''

There are chapters on hurricanes and how they form, a guide to thunderstorms and what to worry about, a primer on global warming issues, snowstorms and blizzards, a chapter on weather and its effects on health, and definitions of Doppler, NEXRAD and all the other words you hear and don't understand.

Published by Alpha Books, the ``Idiot's Guide to Weather'' is the latest in a series of more than 100 books that includes ``The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cooking Pasta'' and ``The Complete Idiot's Guide to Parenting a Teenager.'' Goldstein's book lists for $16.95.

An editor with Alpha Books, a division of Macmillan General Reference in New York, approached Goldstein about the book in early 1998, and he set to work. A longtime faculty member at Western Connecticut State University and director emeritus of its weather center, Goldstein is a weather forecaster at Channel 8, WTNH-TV, and a weather columnist for The Courant.

As the book was about to be published, Goldstein was asked if he would be interested in starting a fund to further research into multiple myeloma, cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow, which he was diagnosed with several years ago. He readily agreed, and he has decided to donate all royalties from the book to the new fund, which will be associated with the Yale University School of Medicine.

``The people at Yale have been very good to me, and if it were not for what they did for me over the last three years I would not have had the energy to write that book,'' he said.

Last October, his cancer became aggressive again, and for a time it appeared he might have to undergo a bone marrow transplant. But an experimental treatment regimen has helped greatly, diminishing the cancer by 50 percent, he said.

``I feel as good as I have felt in the last three years,'' he said.

``Whatever I can do to help find a way to better manage multiple myeloma or related cancers I certainly want to make that contribution.''

By the way, Goldstein says, ``You don't have to be an idiot to like this book.''